One unfortunate occurence that happened in the directory industry is some people bought their way to the top. They bought high pagerank links to boost the pagerank of their directory, and then they made a lot of money in the short term selling links, only to see their site penalized by google a few months later. But before that happened, many others tried to follow this same path, and some failed. As a result, there are a good number of "general"-type directories that are not very well maintained. Fortunately, we are not seeing this type of activity so much these days.
Now, you are seeing more niche and regional directories, and the general directories that are thriving are well maintained and have done something to set themselves apart from the others. So fortunately, the growth we are seeing in the directory industry is healthier. People are producting higher quality sites in their niche. The industry is starting to mature, and I'm really glad to see this.
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